THE HEIAN ERA 393

was banished to Kyushu, where he ate his heart out in
exile, as a Viceroy who ought to have been President of the
University.

Other classical scholars of the age were Kiyotsura (847-
918), who wrote a memorial urging reforms, and the
earlier Sadanushi (785-852) who inaugurated the making
of a prose anthology of nearly a thousand volumes.

Others were specialists in a narrow sense, each devoting
himself to one Chinese classic and its Han commentary,
and these became family traditions. The favourite works
were the 'Book of Rites', 'The Chronicles of Lu', and 'The
Classic of Filial Piety', but next to calligraphy the great
craze was Chinese poetry, and the inspiration of T'ang
went on, though the Court preferred the earlier poets, and
emperor and officials capped verses in the winding-water
tourneys familiar in Chinese paintings and Japanese cari-
catures. Seated by a stream they caught little cups of wine
as they floated by, drank and made a couplet, capping one
another's sentiments, and drinking one another out. In
such noble emulation and in stern wars with the Ainu,
in Chinese scholarship and in experiments in Japanese, in
intrigues and love-affairs, in compiling anthologies and
histories, the early Heian Age passed. From the tenth
century on there are signs of new vigour and freedom, and
women are its pioneers.

V

This process began during the Nara Age. Jito, herself
a poetess, saw to the completion of the Kojiki, and gathered
at Nara artists and men of letters. Her daughter Gensho
inspired the Nihongi, and Gemmyo, consort of Shomu,
was the patroness of the poets Hitomaru and Yakamoshi.

If the Nara era has been described as pre-eminently a
woman's era, the Heian women were no less remarkable.
Seven of the ten great literary figures of this era are women.
They could watch with detached and humorous eye the
elaborate ceremonies of the Court, the scholarly trivialities
and amours of the nobles; and they developed the art of